Ever existed in ancient times people who worshipped the Goddess, the Great Mother, in the Mediterranean area? Has there been a long period of peace, in devotion to the Goddess, without war and violence? Before Greeks? And wich were its rituals and its daily life?This book on the islands of Crete and Cyprus, born from the trips in the last years, answers these questions. It is a notebook of a detailed in-vestigation on the origins of the cult of the Mother in the Aegean Sea before the beginning of the greek civilization.Furthermore, the author highlights, in a simple way, how geometric forms in the nature and art decorations have the same origin, and shows the connections between them. Through the cult of the Great Mother and the myths of Astarte and Aphrodite, through the symbols of the spiral, of the dove, and from the swastica to the labyrinth of Mi-nos, you are accompanied in a beautiful interesting journey, manifold, rich in news, images and references. Susanna Casale is an artist, painter and restorer, fond of Art History and a travel lover. Spiritual seeker, she is interested in spiritual and primordial aspects of traditional art, especially of Mesoamerican, Me-xican and Mediterranean civilizations. Works and live in Italy.

€ 20,00

JOURNEY INTO THE ISLANDS OF CRETE

AND CYPRUSBETWEEN HISTORY

AND SYMBOLS OF THE ANCIENT MOTHER

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I dedicate this book to Shri Mataji Nirmala Devi and to Mauro, my husband.

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This book takes birth from my travel notes concerning the islands of Crete and Cyprus -south and north- that I recently visited. In the archaeological locations and ruins on the top of the mountains I rediscovered, in the subjects and the sites, the Mediterranean roots of the cult of the Mother. The originality, the neatness, the cheerful and playful expression of the art and the religion of the Minoans, the magnificent natural and historical beauty in Cyprus, has inspired me to this research and finally to the printing of this book. It’s important to specify that the Minoan civilization, of which few is known, started already before the Greek (around 7000 B.C.) and was a refined Neolithic society that reached its greatest cultural flourishing with periods of long-lasting peace. The Greeks will be treasuring this rich civilization, absorbing and developing in autonomous ways the essential Minoan themes and the depth of their contents. To point out the amazing archaeological find in the '900, consisting of some clay statues of big dimensions (about one meter high) of the "Goddesses with lifted arms" in the act of blessing, on Mount Karfi. The Goddesses are aesthetically distant from our modern taste, with their primitive apparent simplicity, but they are of great historical value as a concrete proof of the existence of the devotion to the Great Mother in the Aegean Sea and in the Mediterranean before the Greek civilization.

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Interesting is the history of the site of Karfi, founded in 1100 B.C. from three thousand Minoan fugitive run away on the mount because of the advance of the Dorians on the coasts of the island, and how they tried to protect and save their ancient culture of the Divine Mother till the end. Daily life must have been a hard struggle for these families on top of the mount, exhausted by cold winters and buffeted by gelid winds. Indeed, this inaccessibility to the site had a great defensive value, and preserved the settlement and its sanctuary of the “Goddesses with lifted arms" from external attacks, while the cultivation of the plateau furnished food and pastures for the livestock. Karfi was peacefully evacuated around 1000 B.C., when its inhabitants have been absorbed by the new occupying cultures of the island and the statues got lost until their discovery in the last century. The site looks very beautiful nowadays, with nice vibrations, and a top view of a turquoise blue sea. If lucky, from the ruins, one can see the flight of the rare Griffon Vulture that majestically hovers in the sky from the nests on the surrounding rocks. In writing this paper I complied to the most relevant information on the history and religion of Crete and Cyprus.

A cheerful huddle attends to the dances Greek painting, VII cent. B.C.

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I would like to address those who are interested, to deepen and to develop the special topics inspired by these places, very rich and full of unexpected discoveries. In the second part I developed a research on the symbols and the analogies between decorative forms in the nature and in the art of Crete and Cyprus. In the chapter concerning the symbols, I preferred to highlight the less known, among those represented in Minoan and Cypriot art. In conclusion, going around Crete or Cyprus today, the air nicely smells like feminine presence, attracting and captivating every visitors. Susanna Casale

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Above: Vase with thin walls and pleated hem containing small cups.

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The first archaeological discoveries of female little statues concerning the cult of the Mother are from the Palaeolithic age, and from then the area of expansion of the adoration of the Goddess extended in the whole south-eastern Europe, including central Europe, the islands, the zones from the Adriatic to the Aegean, from Poland to Crete, from Cyprus to Malta.

Similar traces are contemporarily found in the whole Near East, from Palestine, Syria, Phoenicia (Lebanon), Mesopotamia (Iraq), to Anatolia (Turkey). From the first little statues of the Great Goddess, soon animals became the symbol, in order to express some specific functions in the religious representation, and they were a symbol of the Mother: from the leopard, to the cow, the dog, the bear, the deer, the hedgehog, the turtle, the fish, the toad, the snake, the bird, the bee and the butterfly. Every animal symbolized a function or a specific quality of the divinity. In the archaic periods the Goddess is always represented naked and without ornaments, but in the VII millennium she is adorned with necklaces, bracelets and anklets. The city of Byblos in Phoenicia, the area of Erìmi in Cyprus and the Cretan building of Knossos, attest that the adoration of the Great Mother was spread throughout the Mediterranean in the Neolithic, and that it developed in symbiosis with the pre-existing civilizations, since this kind of little statues has also been found in Susa (Iran), in Mohenjo-Daro and Harappa (India), in Anau in Turkestan, in Kulli in the Beluchistan, in Badari in Egypt and in Malta (Haghia Kim).

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Goddess of the snakes. Museum of Heraklion

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The main deities of Minoan religion, are the Nature as Great Mother or Great Goddess, and the Vegetation, personified by a young mortal god often represented by Dionysus. Subsequently the young God of the vegetation has been mentioned as Divine Child, Supreme Kouros, Zacinto. The Goddess, that represented fertility, has been called Great Mother, Mother of the peaks, Mother Idea and Cybele Rea (in 204 B.C., after the second Punic War, this last has become the cult of the "Great Mather" in Rome). The Goddesses were often represented holding a sacred vase, like Cybele Rea, or with the divine child in their arms.

Her different qualities have been afterwards inherited by the goddesses named Era (eternal as the time, She who exists, the announcer, the brave), then of Artemis, of Aphrodite, of Athena, of Demeter (goddess of fertility).

Beside: Goddess of thousand breasts, symbol of divine nourishment; in the Capitoline Museums, Rome, there is a similar exemplar.

Goddess who lifts the divine child. 1900 -1300 B.C.

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